By Nathan Grayson on August 15th, 2012 at 10:00 am.
Among modern videogame story structures, “The hunter becomes the hunted” is a pretty big one. Crysis 3, however, is embracing the lesser-known but perhaps even more emotionally resonant “The hunter becomes the hunted, but then gets killed and respawns as the hunter – who then hunts the other former hunters who are now being hunted.” In short, they, sir, are being hunted. So basically, it kicks off with two cloak-happy nanosuit supersoldiers attempting to prevent 14 Cell commandos from reaching an evac point. Then chaos ensues, lives are lost, and the cycle of reincarnation is set to “fast forward” and “hilarious irony.”
Crysis 2, of course, tried to leverage the skins-vs-nanosuits idea, but erred too much on the side of balancing things by limiting nanos’ demigodlike powers. This time around, however, the tech-infused cyborg men are basically part-Predator, part-zombie. Odds are, you’ll still have to play smart and pick the right times to strike, but this mode seems to be embracing the idea that a person in a nanosuit’s the king of the concrete jungle. Even with those lopsided numbers, they need only pick off a couple soldiers to significantly swing the odds in their favor.
It still sounds like fun, though, I think. I’m not of the opinion that everything needs to be perfectly balanced, and in a lot of ways, that type of “Balance comes before all else” mentality shackles developers’ ability to dream up atypical modes like this one. Plus, only one Cell soldier needs to survive for that side to claim victory. So who knows? Maybe it won’t turn out to be as one-sided as it sounds. Hopefully our very old friend Time (not the magazine) will have something to tell us in the near future.
15/08/2012 at 10:11 SAeN says:
Does anyone play the multiplayer?
15/08/2012 at 12:30 Tridae says:
I do and I’d say it’s one of the strongest points of the game. The suit modes really mix things up well and the enhanced movement makes for some interesting ways to move around the map. I much prefer Crysis2′s mp gunplay to that of BF3 or COD, each little 1on 1 skirmish you enter feels a lot more tactical, proper management of your suit abilities is the key to winning and not just twitch reactions.
15/08/2012 at 12:44 suibhne says:
I enjoyed Crysis 2′s MP for the first 5 days or so, before it became absolutely swamped by rampant cheating due to the fact that the game had no anti-cheat measures whatsoever.
16/08/2012 at 01:01 RiptoR says:
I stopped playing due to the fact that while the MP had several small annoyances with the controls that got on my nerves. For example, you could not toggle sprinting, so you did have to hold down the key making it difficult to pull of the slide move with my favourite WSAD setup (sprint on shift, crouch on ctrl). And if I remember correctly, in SP you could toggle sprinting, which made this “flaw” even more annoying.
15/08/2012 at 10:12 MrKay says:
While the idea is fine (I remember some glorious survival matches in AvP2), it seem like the hunters are too powerful in this mode – and by the looks of it the Cell players will just be walking around, hoping they won’t take the first arrow. It’s probably overplayed though, so I’m hoping for a bit more even odds and a bit more action at release.
15/08/2012 at 10:18 Mr. Mister says:
They better have EMP grenades.
15/08/2012 at 10:27 Zeewolf says:
This looked absolutely dreadful.
15/08/2012 at 12:39 Tridae says:
but now it looks great? I think so, Crysis2′s mp was a lot of fun and I LOVED ‘The Hidden’ Mod for source so this might actually drive me to buy this for the MP alone.
15/08/2012 at 10:38 Avish says:
Poor CELL operatives slaughtered by overpowered suit soldiers.
Predator mode or Deliverance mode sound more appropriate.
15/08/2012 at 10:54 Foppy says:
Of course, if the CELL soldiers have the option of covering themselves in mud, they stand a good chance.
15/08/2012 at 11:14 Goodtwist says:
And then each time they scream “Run to da choppaaaa!!”
15/08/2012 at 11:14 Eclipse says:
reminds me of The Hidden: Source, one of the coolest multiplayer mods for HL2 ever.
In that game the “Hidden” was not only invisible, but also able to heal up from dead bodies and to grab and hang bodies around, you only had melee attack but you could also make noise and scare the shit out the armed players searching for you, and last but not least you could grab bodies and drag them around, or even stick them to a wall or the ceiling. That created very horror-movie situations where the last one of the group would be slaughtered in a second and hanged to the ceiling, then the others would all go “omg he’s dead!” and start shooting around randomly.
I remember people cuddled up with their back on a corner, people placing movement sensors around, and there was even a map with whater, like a sewer, and people would look for splashes so you had to move jumping from a wall to another one inside it
15/08/2012 at 11:56 Victuz says:
I love that mod so much. The amount of creepy shit the hidden can do is fantastic, like the hanging of bodies you mentioned (also the fact that killed players can no longer talk on voip) so many times the hunter can kill like 3 people silently and hang them on the ceiling as warning.
The way I remember people playing is not really to “win” as the hunter (because that was relatively easy) but to create the most tension. It was great.
I really wish the mod was still supported by it’s devs, it sadly way too unstable nowadays. And if it crashes once than most people can’t play it any more for some reason (including me).
15/08/2012 at 15:07 oWn4g3 says:
Something is still happening over there though.
http://forum.hidden-source.com/forumdisplay.php?19-Hiddenite-Test-Build-Updates
I think we can be optimistic :)
15/08/2012 at 11:58 kulik says:
Oh yes, i remember Hidden. The most terrifying experience was after all your squad was taken out and the hidden was just playing with you. Bodies hanging from the ceiling Hidden occasionally throwing things at you and all that shit. I remember how i spectated a game in which the last operative was so scared that he run to a corner and refused to turn around and typed something like “just kill me pls”.
15/08/2012 at 15:04 exenter says:
I remember the mod differently. Hidden was not that hard to spot and the operatives won most of the time.
15/08/2012 at 17:31 Eclipse says:
a good Hidden was almost invisible :P it wasn’t hard to spot in bright places, but maps had several darker places where the hidden was basically invisible. It wasn’t easy to win with the hidden anyway
15/08/2012 at 11:15 Muzman says:
The old Quake 2 mod was actually kinda fun and tense. If you’re the predator and the other team are half decent, as soon as you make that first move they’re on you trying to flush you out. I’m surprised this game mode doesn’t show up more often (although I guess there’s rarely a nice sci-fi excuse for it to be there)
15/08/2012 at 15:31 affront says:
This. Q2 Nighthunters was awesome, especially on a small LAN where everyone was in a single room. Huge amounts of hilarity.
I also think that I actually prefer that more “FFA” mode where whoever kills the predator/hunter/hidden BECOMES him (there is only ever one, not like in C3 apparently), and then goes on his own rampage and the whole thing is played for frags instead of rounds.
15/08/2012 at 11:21 Moni says:
I’m going to get a microphone so I can just constantly yell, “Get to the choppa.” and other assorted Predator references at other players.
15/08/2012 at 11:23 Muzman says:
If et bleeds ve can kill et
15/08/2012 at 12:18 farlander says:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlicWUDf5MM
15/08/2012 at 14:39 squirrel says:
I thought the Cells are the bad guys…… This video makes me feel for the Cell mercenaries.
But is that stealth mode being too unfair for Cell players? I dont see that Cells are offered any counter measures like infra-red goggles.
BTW, this new mode offers a completely new experience out of supposingly very fast paced combat of Crysis. This one tests the patience of players to strike only at the right moment.
15/08/2012 at 14:40 KenTWOu says:
It looks like they remade asymmetrical Assault mode from Crysis 2 and that mode was very fun.
15/08/2012 at 21:18 Nuclear Pony says:
I’m not quite conviced yet that punching your fist through someone’s skull can be considered a “stealth kill”.